So can gay people get married in the UK? Whether or not they should be allowed to is turning out to be a significant issue in the US elections this year. I think it's a scandalous diversion from issues like Iraq, the federal budget, tax breaks, etc. To make this an issue works in Bush's favor, it seems to me. Of course, I think gay folks should have equal rights across the board, including the right to marry. What do ya'll think?

I see the Bush camp has embraced the brilliant Clintonesque strategy of standing for everything on this issue...Bush is against gay marriage, while Cheney (who??? where was that guy for about three years?) is for it. So there you go.

__________________
"I learned never to drink anything out of a jar labeled 'w-i-s-k-i.'"

I see the Bush camp has embraced the brilliant Clintonesque strategy of standing for everything on this issue...Bush is against gay marriage, while Cheney (who??? where was that guy for about three years?) is for it. So there you go.

One of Cheney's daughters happens to be a lesbian, so he's been honestly sensititzed on the subject. In this case, it's not Clintonian "triangulation."

So far from that, during the 2004 vice-presidential debate, John Edwards (the vice-presidential candidate from the Democratic Party opposing the re-election of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney) chose to inform the American public of Mr. Cheney's daughter's lesbianism at the outset of the debate.

So much for the Democratic Party's support for gays and lesbians.

__________________
"The proper study of man is everything." C.S. Lewis

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous." P.J. O'Rourke

It's so obviously a natural right, it should be validated by law as such. I have been digusted how Bush has tried to drag new amendments to the Constitution that are purely a fundamentalist Xian viewpoint of what a 'marriage' is. The rights issues for gays/lesbian/transgender people in the States need addressing. I think in the UK we are slowly but surely making progress.

It's so obviously a natural right, it should be validated by law as such. I have been digusted how Bush has tried to drag new amendments to the Constitution that are purely a fundamentalist Xian viewpoint of what a 'marriage' is. The rights issues for gays/lesbian/transgender people in the States need addressing. I think in the UK we are slowly but surely making progress.

Bush, himself, wasn't a zealot on the issue.

He had his opinion, but did NOT try to get a Constitutional Amendment enacted to enforce it on anyone.

In one of Bush's few public statements on gayness, he said that he could not judge anyone on the basis of their sexuality.

It stuns me how people speak out against George W. Bush without knowing what or who they are talking about.

Actually, the "Defense of Marriage Act," which defines "marriage" as being between a man and a woman, is pre-Bush - a Republican Congress passed it during the Clinton years.

The US Supreme Court recently found The Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional, in one of a series of increasingly libertarian rulings.

Constitutional amendments, by the way, are such ponderous beasts that no one undertakes one lightly. To actually amend the Constitution requires either a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or a national convention to amend the Constitution in which the legislatures of two-thirds (34) of the States vote to pass an amendment to the Constitution.

AFTER which, three-fourths (38 ) of the states' legislatures must ratify the amendment within a stipulated time period (if any).

So Constitutional amendments tend to either fail ratification, or if they are ratitfied, are on fairly uncontroversial topics.

The last Amendment to the Constitution to be ratified, the 27th, delays laws affecting Congressional salary from taking effect until after the next election of representatives. Its ratification took 202 years,7 months and 12 days, and it went into effect on May 7, 1992

__________________
"The proper study of man is everything." C.S. Lewis

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous." P.J. O'Rourke

Greetings to all, I was quite pleased to become a member of this forum. Myself being an American, I am distressed by how this issue could shape my country in terms of this year's Presidential Election, and any amendments made to the U.S. Constitution in the future. There are many people here on both sides of the issue. There are those who hold, as I do, that securing gay marriage is a cause that should be embraced and championed by lovers of civil liberties. On the other side is a powerful group that discriminates on the basis of sex, and seeks to establish rules for whom can marry whom. They do not want gays to have certain rights because it is not aesthetically or religiously pleasing, and the justifications for such discrimination have once again been derived from religious sources and cultural norms (much like the justifications for slavery and segregation in the U.S. or the denial of the voting franchise to women and anyone else not rich, white, and male).
The United States is home to people like Rev. Jerry Falwell, a very conservative right wing preacher(whom, it should be noted, would have a much better chance of making it into the Oval Office than myself; scary) that has made quite a career out of teaching people to hate gays. Falwell is not unique though, nor has he been unsuccessful; the message is delivered by many religious leaders, and most notably by a preacher in Kansas who travelled with members of his congregation to the funeral of Matthew Shepard to tell all grieving that Mr. Shepard was rightly murdered, and in Hell. For those that don't know, Mr. Shepard was brutally murdered by people that hate gays. I was shocked by the reaction to it: there were people that felt the murderers hadn't done anything wrong! It held a close paralell, at least in my way of thinking, with lynchings of African Americans carried out by the Ku Klux Klan.
Forgive me, we're discussing gay marriage. It seems the last institution that the religious right in my country feels assured that it can keep from the grasp of gays, and they are not about to relinquish it. There is an outcry against gay marriage for several reasons, a few of which follow: the couple cannot produce children, the children they may have or adopt will be harassed and ostracized at school, and gays cannot fulfill the 'natural purpose requirements' that heterosexual couples can.
To the first, it should be remembered that not even all heterosexual couples can have children or seek to have them, nor do they provide loving and proper homes to the children that they do have. The traditional notion of the family is proving to be archaic, especially as more women like myself seek to be career professionals.
To the second, a fitting reply would be that children will exercise what they learn at home, and if people are so worried about ostracism then they should teach their children to be tolerant, that there is nothing to make fun of.
Lastly, there is the argument regarding the natural purposes of body parts(appendix, anyone?), so it would only be right to condemn anyone that has ever enjoyed oral sex, winked at somebody, ...or pointed a finger. :o It should be remembered that homosexuality is neither particular to culture, nor (I have heard, and please do correct me if I am wrong) species.
My apologies for the length and any glaring technical mistakes.
I am also interested in hearing what anyone else has to say.

Greetings to all, I was quite pleased to become a member of this forum. Myself being an American, I am distressed by how this issue could shape my country in terms of this year's Presidential Election, and any amendments made to the U.S. Constitution in the future. There are many people here on both sides of the issue. There are those who hold, as I do, that securing gay marriage is a cause that should be embraced and championed by lovers of civil liberties. On the other side is a powerful group that discriminates on the basis of sex, and seeks to establish rules for whom can marry whom. They do not want gays to have certain rights because it is not aesthetically or religiously pleasing, and the justifications for such discrimination have once again been derived from religious sources and cultural norms (much like the justifications for slavery and segregation in the U.S. or the denial of the voting franchise to women and anyone else not rich, white, and male).
The United States is home to people like Rev. Jerry Falwell, a very conservative right wing preacher(whom, it should be noted, would have a much better chance of making it into the Oval Office than myself; scary) that has made quite a career out of teaching people to hate gays. Falwell is not unique though, nor has he been unsuccessful; the message is delivered by many religious leaders, and most notably by a preacher in Kansas who travelled with members of his congregation to the funeral of Matthew Shepard to tell all grieving that Mr. Shepard was rightly murdered, and in Hell. For those that don't know, Mr. Shepard was brutally murdered by people that hate gays. I was shocked by the reaction to it: there were people that felt the murderers hadn't done anything wrong! It held a close paralell, at least in my way of thinking, with lynchings of African Americans carried out by the Ku Klux Klan.
Forgive me, we're discussing gay marriage. It seems the last institution that the religious right in my country feels assured that it can keep from the grasp of gays, and they are not about to relinquish it. There is an outcry against gay marriage for several reasons, a few of which follow: the couple cannot produce children, the children they may have or adopt will be harassed and ostracized at school, and gays cannot fulfill the 'natural purpose requirements' that heterosexual couples can.
To the first, it should be remembered that not even all heterosexual couples can have children or seek to have them, nor do they provide loving and proper homes to the children that they do have. The traditional notion of the family is proving to be archaic, especially as more women like myself seek to be career professionals.
To the second, a fitting reply would be that children will exercise what they learn at home, and if people are so worried about ostracism then they should teach their children to be tolerant, that there is nothing to make fun of.
Lastly, there is the argument regarding the natural purposes of body parts(appendix, anyone?), so it would only be right to condemn anyone that has ever enjoyed oral sex, winked at somebody, ...or pointed a finger. :o It should be remembered that homosexuality is neither particular to culture, nor (I have heard, and please do correct me if I am wrong) species.
My apologies for the length and any glaring technical mistakes.
I am also interested in hearing what anyone else has to say.

Well, you asked for it...

I'm a citizen of the United States of America, straight, and I don't feel that sexual orientation is the government's business, one way or the other. Neither is marriage, beyond the people's right to have their property rights safeguarded before, during and after marriages.

I feel strongly that gays, lesbians and other non-standard gender groups ought to have the same rights to enter into marriage as straights, if they so choose. Gay and lesbian couples ought to have the same rights as straights to be next-of-kin to each other, visit each other in hospital, et cetera.

I feel that ostracism of gays and lesbians is the hallmark of a twisted mind.

Does that cover it?

__________________
"The proper study of man is everything." C.S. Lewis

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous." P.J. O'Rourke